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Bullitt in my Pocket (Part 2)

I have to apologize to my readers for the lack of blogging. We had a Jewish Holiday followed by Shabbat. Even before that I was busy with shul stuff so here I am looking at my messy house and trying to catch up with some blogging action.

So, how big/long is this thing? I took some sexy shots of the bike next to cars. Here you go:

Large honken truck vs. Bike

Mid-sized honken car vs. Bike

Next task was to find a kid to use as my test dummy. So, I biked by the house where I am able to borrow four different sized kids. Whahh, they weren't home. As proof here I am parked in front of the house!

Just by these three pictures you see how much better this bike looks with MY seat. I also did something really nasty and added a bell that even deaf people can hear. The bell is mostly for safety and the seat was for comfort.

HILLS:
What's a girl to do when you have a couple of hours to kill before school kid pick up? Well, I thought I would test all those hills I need to get up. So, I mostly biked up Morgan, which is miracle. I am pretty sure if I had a race with myself walking a bike up the hill and riding up the hill I would win walking/pushing a bike. In any case, I did try to bike some some wonky hills in our hood. Here is one place I have to get to a lot and mostly with stuff to schlep:

This picture does not do justice to that driveway

Once I was at the top I realized I had to maneuver steps so I lifted the bike to lots of fanfare and balloons, mostly imaginary.

I did it!

I did manage to lift the bike up these steps so I could park and lock it. Going down was just as interesting as I had to do lots of lifting but it was okay and I was fine.

CARGO: Stuff
So, I was sad I had no kid to schlep during the school hours and had to work on sticking junk in it. Now I have Schwalbe tires on my Redline Metro 9 bike and have been too lazy to change the front tire and in the process of trying to fix everything ruined two tubes. So, I did the only sensible thing and biked over to Bike Works to have those kind people help me. I did the obligatory drive by, biking really slow, ringing my bell and waving to anyone inside. Davey Oil came out and I told him the whole story about the bike. Afterwards he changed the tube I ruined and made my merry way to pick up children from school. I did manage to pack the bike with Shabbos groceries and a tire as seen in a picture I will repeat again:

Shabbos is no good without Kettle chips!

Cargo: Kid

I really wanted to load this thing with kids but I guess I was stuck using my own genetic output kid for that kind of thing. We biked home from her friends house taking my all too familiar lazy route home where I partially bike on the sidewalk and when we turned a corner I almost killed a pedestrian who was too slow to realize we almost obliterated them with this cargo bike. While we almost maimed someone both my child and I laughed, not good. This goes to show you how much faster I am able to go and turn sharp corners. I like that! I can imagine all sorts of imaginary races I could have with other people on bikes.

What about getting on the bike with a human sitting in the front. As before, you have to think happy thoughts, look at the horizon and think ninja balance. This is the only way to deal with it. My kid was really nervous about this because our Bakfiets testing was not so fun. Now she can add, almost mowing down another human as part of her bike story repertoire.

Now that my kid is almost as tall as I am I was worried I would wack the heck out of her head while she was seated but I didn't have this issue but you see her long legs were kinda squooshed in there so that little box is not so cozy. I even sat in it for fun. Mr. Peyos got on the bike and it looked too funny/wrong for this blog.

If you are wondering what it looks like to sit in the passenger seat here is that view:

Faster...wheee!

Modifications:
So, riding the bike was not that difficult but because of how the handlebars were adjusted for the original rider I had a hard time getting very far without feeling that my arms were going to fall off. If I had my own I would change the riding position so I was upright. I like being upright and it just feels safer this way. Yes, I would totally change the seat to some kind of Brooks saddle. Lastly, I would add a BionX electric assist just because it would be nice to schlep even more than I am able to sometimes. I might possibly be able to do a full Costco run and have people not laugh at me when I try to carry a case of hot cups out of the store. Then again, I am not riding my bike for image reasons.

I love this bike because it has so much potential. This basically sums up what I would need in a bike for riding in a hill Seattle such as Seattle.

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